GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

284
ETHICS
The Moral Faculty Distinguished by Shaftesbury
from the Senses. Its Resemblances to the Reasoning
Part of the Soul. In the first place, though he insists
that "feeling" is at once the mainspring and the arbiter of
morality, Shaftesbury ascribes to feeling functions whose
be inclined to
performance most people would naturally
attribute to reason. There is, he says, a number of natural
impulses in which the Will of Nature expresses itself.. But
morality is not to be found in the indulgence of any one
of them. It is the result rather of a reflective process which,
taking its standpoint outside the circle of natural impulses,
either approves of or condemns them. The approval and
the condemnation which morality brings to bear on the
natural impulses are not exclusively rational; on the
contrary, they are informed with an emotional quality
in virtue of which we can encourage the indulgence of
the impulses approved, and discourage the indulgence of
the impulses condemned. Although, however, it is pervaded
by this emotional quality, obedience to the moral faculty
is not, Shaftesbury is careful to insist, to be likened either
to the indulgence of the senses or to the gratification of
self-interest.
The whole account is strongly reminiscent of Plato's
description of the reasoning part of the soul with its characteristic
qualities of "appetition", in virtue of which it
desires the good, and of "conation", by means of which
it reproves the 1
unruly impulses. It also recalls Butler's
insistence upon the authoritative aspect of 2
conscience.
In permitting us to make these comparisons Shaftesbury
has, however, travelled a long way from the conception of
an intuitive moral sense derived from and expressing the
Will of Nature, of which we are entitled to ask nothing
in the way ofjustification save only that it should function as
the Will of Nature dictates.
While Shaftesbury's move in the direction of Utili-
tarianism is limited to attributing to the moral faculty,
officially identified with feeling, functions which are
1 See Chapter II, pp. 53, 56.
* See Chapter VI, pp. 196, 197.